I liked Tom a lot. I tried my best to fall in love with him. It was obvious he was a good father to his own children, and I felt sure he would be just as good to Carrington. There was so much that was right about Tom, so many reasons I should have loved him. It's one of the frustrations of dating that sometimes you can be with a nice person who is obviously worth loving, but there isn't enough heat between you to light a tea candle.
We made love on the weekends when his ex-wife had the kids and I could get a
babysitter for Carrington. Unfortunately the sex was lukewarm. Since I could never come while Tom was inside me—all I felt was the mild inner pressure you feel from the speculum at the gynecologist's office—he would start out by using his fingers to rub me into a climax. It didn't always work, but sometimes I achieved a few gratifying spasms, and when I couldn't and began to feel irritated and chafed. I faked it. Then he would either gently push my head down until I took him into my mouth, or he would lever himself over me and we would do it missionary style. The routine never changed.
I bought a couple of sex books and tried to figure out how to improve things. Tom was amused by my abashed requests to try a couple of positions I had read about, and he told me it was all still just a matter of putting tab A into slot B. But if I wanted to do something new. he said, he was all for it.
I was dismayed to find Tom was right. It felt awkward and silly, and no matter how I tried, I couldn't come while we were arranged in those yogalike tangles. The only new thing Tom wouldn't try was going down on me. I stammered and turned crimson when I asked him for it. I would say that was the most embarrassing moment of my entire life, except it was even worse when Tom replied apologetically he had never liked doing that. It was unhygienic, he said, and he didn't really enjoy how women tasted. If I didn't mind, he would rather not. I said no. of course I didn't mind. I didn't want him to do something he didn't like.
But every time we slept together after that and I felt his hands urging my head down, I started to feel a little resentful. And then I felt guilty, because Tom was generous in so many other ways. It didn't matter. I told myself. There were other things we could do in bed. But the situation bothered me enough—it seemed I was missing some essential understanding—that I told Angie one morning before the salon opened. After making certain everything was set up for the day, the carts well stocked, the styling tools cleaned, we all took a few minutes to primp.
I was spritzing some volumizer in my hair, while Angie reapplied her lip gloss. I can't remember exactly what I asked her, something like had she ever had a boyfriend who didn't want to do certain things in bed.
Angie's gaze met mine in the mirror. "He doesn't want you to blow him?" A few of the other stylists glanced in our direction.
"No, he likes that," I whispered. "It's.. .well, he doesn't want to do it to me."
Her smartly penciled brows twitched upward. "Doesn't like eating tortilla?"
"Nope. He says"—I could feel red flags of color forming on the crests of my cheeks—"it's unhygienic."
She looked outraged. "It's not any more unhygienic than a man's! What a loser. What a selfish—Liberty, most men love to do that to a woman."
"They do?"
"It's a turn-on for them."
"It is?" That was welcome news. It made me feel a little less mortified about having asked Tom for it.
"Oh. girl." Angie said, shaking her head. "You've got to dump him."
"But...but..." I wasn't certain I wanted to take such drastic measures. This was the longest I'd ever dated someone, and I liked the security of it. I remembered all the revolving-door relationships Mama had gone through. Now I understood why.
Dating is like trying to make a meal out of leftovers. Some leftovers, like meat loaf or banana pudding, actually get better when they've had a little time to mature. But others, like doughnuts or pizza, should be thrown out right away. No matter how you try to warm them up, they're never as good as when they were new. I had been hoping Tom would turn out to be a meat loaf instead of a pizza.
"Dump him, " Angie insisted.
Heather, a petite blonde from California, couldn't resist breaking in. Everything she said sounded like a question, even when it wasn't. "You having boyfriend problems, Liberty?"
Angie answered before I could. "She's going out with a sixty-eight."
There were a few sympathetic groans from the other stylists.
"What's a sixty-eight?" I asked.
"He wants you to go down on him," Heather replied, "but he won't return the favor. Like, it would be sixty-nine, but he owes you one."
Alan, who was smarter about men than the rest of us put together, pointed at me with a round brush as he spoke. "Get rid of him. Liberty. You can't ever change a sixty-eight."